Chinese New Year

“Knowledge is power, we are told... If we know something of the secret of another person’s heart, we are often aware of the enormous power in our hands - weapons to hurt, even destroy.  Something very vulnerable and fragile has been put into our grasp - because most people’s hearts are pretty fragile - and there is sometimes the fearsomely strong urge to use it, to turn against someone, to lay them under obligation to us, to exert a kind of blackmail.  Weakness invites crushing... I have shared something very private, perhaps very humiliating or embarrassing, with my friend.  And as soon as they’ve left, I’m in an anguish of fear and regret: should I have done that?  Am I safe...?

All this really comes to one thing:  the terrible threat of knowledge without love.  Is anything in human relations more frightening than that?"

From Rowan Williams’ sermon, “Knowing and Loving”

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Dear Alex,

The knowledge of Chinese New Year, its dates and festivities, has been declared with powerful wishing in social media.  Friends and families across continents post and tweet for one another the best of greetings - fortune, happiness and health.  Replace, recycle and redeem the old with the new year.  Everything new gets old the moment right after it happens.  

In the happenings of February, let’s add Valentine’s Day to the start of Chinese New Year and now love and its power are magnified on and offscreen in imperial red with sale tags.  Think it, want it, own one and all so your new life will be complete in this new year pending upgrades for next year.  Love is priceless with a price swiped on credit card.  

To know something of someone without love is just as frightening as loving without knowing.  Love the $ 300 pair of sunglasses but there is no need to know why they are so loved.  Love dim sum, lobsters, vacations, spas, naps, even knowledge, and of course the why’s are obvious but don’t ask the why behind these why’s.  If we have the means to get what we love, why should we need to explain our known choices to anyone or to the One?  

Tonight I baked salmon again with the recipe from your wife.  Her instructions were factually simple: sprinkle with your favorite seasoning, brush a little butter on top, cover with parchment sheet to seal in moisture, bake but don’t overcook.  I only remembered because I had tasted her own home-baked salmon for my first time last December.  Flavors among rosemary and conversations infused the tender flakes of salmon with something more vulnerable in the heart.  

There is not much talk of Chinese New Year in my small town away from families.  The facts are irrelevant because tonight I shared with my husband and daughter the salmon, baked with the love and knowledge of a recipe gifted from a friend, to taste the goodness of this New Year.  

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

Sunday afternoon my son rumbled down the stairs with a burning question while I was reading a particularly difficult Rowan Williams book (this guy is killing me; and I shall let the pronoun remain ambiguous).

Lately he, my son, has been playing "the devil's advocate," checking out atheists (so they called themselves but I'll need to see their moral rigor to vet the declared status) ranting on Youtube, and I think it's a mighty fine thing, my son's questioning, seeking, to make what was given him truly his own.

Chinese.  New.  Year.  Put the three words together and we know what the term means.  Or so we think.  Every word is laden with value and meaning, convention and implication, freedom and demand.  What makes a Chinese a Chinese?  How does a year get "old" and become "new" again?  And who is to say a "year" is a good demarcation to create significance, to invoke a heightened awareness that would do us good to observe, to shape our life with?

Sunday my son raised a classic question about the so-called omniscience of God, that if God is to know everything, all our decisions, in advance, maybe even predetermine them, then how can we be held responsible for our actions?  I hope I did a good job giving him a graceful answer, a big part of such I believe would have to do with a genuine invitation to further questioning, such as one's own assumptions, in this case, about "knowledge" and "knowing."  I introduced him to the concept of "Middle Knowledge" and prayed that it won't hurt his brain.

What I forgot was to pray with him.

We subscribed to what was prescribed us, first as a child, not because we were stupid.  Quite the contrary, we were smart enough--truly intelligent--to trust there is good intention, valuable purpose behind the Chinese and the New and the Year.  And if the conventions, our heritage, the meaning-givers are to repay our trust with their faithful nurturing, continual love, be robust enough to allow, even encourage, our questioning of the given meanings themselves, we shall love to stay in love, to re-tradition the gifts, and maybe even to amplify a legacy.

"All this really comes to one thing: the terrible threat of knowledge without love.  Is anything in human relations more frightening than that?"  Is there a Being more evil than one who "knows it all" but loves not much or even not at all?

I told my son, You see, all the social media sites you used "know" you well.  If the data, the "knowing" they've gathered about you shows you are useless to them, they shall ignore you, discount you, make an indifference of you.  If one day you become useful to them, then there will be a price on your head, and they shall trade it with or without you knowing, willy-nilly.  And if there ever arises a reason for them to hate you, to hurt you, to hunt you down, you can trust--in fact, the only thing you can trust about them then will be--that the harm can and shall be done.  To them there's nothing personal.

And that's everything the problem: we are not a "person," not a real human being to them.  What we don't deem sacred we tend to desecrate.

The question my son raised is not really about "knowledge," but about trust, whether the Knower is trustworthy, which has to do with the nature of his "knowing" and our "being known" by him.  What we are talking about is not a head issue, but a heart failure.

As parents, we often prescribe to your kids ways of living, as if we "know" how to live well, as if we "know" ourselves enough, "know" our kids enough.  But what I think they are really looking at is whether our ways are trustworthy, if we are truly in love with our life given and the Life-giver himself.

Yours, Alex